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Cheryl Darlene Lamerson 21 August 1956 – March 31, 66 years old.
Cheryl liked to be in control: of herself, her activities, and her environment. She liked organizing things and said her personal motto was “organization for the nation.”
She was born in Durham, Ontario to an older, conservative family. As a teen of the 60’s she rebelled, but she was a very polite hellion. She wanted excitement, adventure, equality and to make a difference. She joined the Canadian Forces where she earned her education, by scholarship, in Organizational Psychology.
Throughout her career she focused on improving the situation for personnel in the military, especially women and diverse groups, in order to improve the effectiveness of the military. As an advisor to senior leaders, she always told them that she would not tell them if their policies or actions would send them to hell but would point out why they wouldn’t make it to heaven.
During this time she adopted her wonderful daughter Victoria Lamerson-Brooks and married Dr Will Brooks. She also got to know Will’s children and was honoured to become “Grandma Cheryl” when their children came along.
Her favourite postings dealt with gender integration, diversity, social justice and change. As the leader of the CF Diversity Office she was proud of her team’s work to implement the Employment Equity Act. Chairing the Committee on Women in NATO Forces was another highlight in her 32-year career. She retired in 2008 as the Chief Organizational Psychologist of the CF, with oversight of 120 psychologists and psychological associates and a unit of 800 personnel.
Retirement, along with a move to Lunenburg in 2010, allowed her to spend more time with friends and family and to define what retirement meant to her. Contributing to the community in a meaningful way, organizing (of course), and recycling became her emphasis. She founded, owned and led the Lunenburg Community Consignment store for ten years.
In the last two years of her life, Cheryl grappled with ovarian cancer and its spread to other organs. She was open about her disease, its treatment and its path in hopes of educating others. True to her nature, she remained active and involved throughout the course of her illness, and never stopped finding ways to connect people to opportunities and give back to her community.
In the last few weeks of her life, Cheryl shared time and loving goodbyes with her husband Will Brooks, daughter Victoria Lamerson-Brooks (Moody Kayed), Will’s children Kate Oland, Ben Brooks (Leanne), Andrew Brooks (Carolyn Barber), as well as grandchildren Linnaea, Liam and Eben Oland, Thalia Brooks and Amon Brooks. One of her final joys was attending Victoria and Moody’s wedding, which was held at Fisherman’s Memorial Hospital on March 22. Cheryl is survived by her sisters, Joan Napier and daughter Lori, and Brenda Turner and daughter Cheryl Ann.
Cheryl has “slipped the surly bonds of earth and” will dance “the sky on laughter-silvered wings.” (High Flight by John Gillespie MacGee.) If you would like to donate in Cheryl’s name, please do so to Ovarian Cancer Canada.
Heartfelt thanks for the kindness, expertise and caring of so many health care practitioners: Dr. Krista Watson, for early detection of the disease; Dr Sarah Conrad, Lunenburg Family Health; Dr Karla Willows, Nurse Sarah Green and the whole gyneoncology team at NS Cancer Centre; the Victorian Order of Nurses; the wonderful staff at Centennial Ward 5A; Dr. Patricia Caldera and Nurse Practitioner Melanie Spence of the Lunenburg Palliative Care Team, and the exceptional caring and creative nursing staff of Fishermen’s Memorial. There are none better. Finally, thanks to Dr. Cathy Kelly for being a friend who helped to make the end of life a lovely place.
A Celebration of Life will be held in the future. And yes, Cheryl organized it!
Friday March 31st 2023
Death notice for the town of: Lunenburg, Province: Nova Scotia
death notice Col Ret Cheryl Darlene Lamerson Friday March 31st 2023
obituaries notice Col Ret Cheryl Darlene Lamerson Friday March 31st 2023
We offer our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Col Ret Cheryl Darlene Lamerson Friday March 31st 2023 and hope that their memory may be a source of comfort during this difficult time. Your thoughts and kind words are greatly appreciated.
In 1982, as a newly minted Major, I had the privilege and pleasure of having then Captain Cheryl Lamerson assigned to my team of Personnel Selection Officers (PSO) at Base Halifax. She was a joy to have on the team: quick to learn, hard working, emotionally intelligent, good-humoured, got along with everybody, a great speaker, extremely productive…you name what you’d want in a subordinate…that was Cheryl.
I’ll never forget my first ever meeting with Cheryl, which happened in my Halifax office.
It was an unexpected meeting…she standing on one side of my desk, me on the other. We smiled and shook hands (her grip firm, of course), then she immediately took control of the conversation to, first, introduce herself with a quick summary of her (then still short) career as a PSO, then to lay down a boundary for our work relationship, with the firmly delivered words: “…and I don’t run around desks.”
Cheryl struck me dumb with those words…I remember absolutely nothing of this meeting after that. (Knowing Cheryl, I presume that she quickly sensed that I was harmless and steered the conversation into a less awkward direction). But the incident left me greatly admiring of this still-young officer…her courage, her intelligence, the amazingly deft touch with which she could defuse a very tricky issue. But it also left me wondering where she’d got the ‘running-around-desks’ metaphor (around whose desk had she already had to run?)
Another indelible memory is from a meeting some 30 years later. By then she was Colonel Lamerson, and I was a conflict management practitioner brought in to conduct a process to improve working relationships in a group that she was leading. I remember nothing of the process, but I’ll never forget her heart-wrenching opening statement to the assembled group: “There are mornings when I wake up and just want to crawl under the bed so that I don’t have to deal with all this conflict.” I was blown away by the courage it must have taken for a senior officer in her position to express such vulnerability to her subordinates.
I express my heart-felt condolences to the family.